Rawhide - Clancy Brown! (He played Kurgan in "Highlander.") Member of The Hong Kong Cavaliers, poisoned by a Red Lectroid.

Perfect Tommy and Reno - Two of The Hong Kong Cavaliers. Tommy has some serious bleached hair.

John Parker - Black Lectroid, sent to help Buckaroo save Earth before his people are forced to destroy it.

John O'Conner - Vincent Schiavelli! (He's been in lots of stuff, the teacher in "Better Off Dead" and the subway ghost in "Ghost.") A Red Lectroid. Vaporized.

The Plot:

This movie has more famous people in it than most blockbuster films! Look at them all! Just look at them! What we have here my friends is a seriously out in left field piece of work. Buckaroo Banzai and his partners have just perfected the "Oscillation Overthruster" and it allows them to travel into the 8th dimension. Why did we miss all the ones between? I dunno! How can a 3rd dimension being interact on the 8th? I dunno! Lord Whorfin is trapped on Earth with a select group of followers, he wants to steal the overthruster and free all the Red Lectroids from exile in the 8th dimension. Then they will return to their home on the 10th planet and defeat the Black Lectroids! Black Lectroids are the good aliens by the way, they're also all Jamaican oddly enough. Need a romance in here somewhere so Buckaroo runs into Penny while performing at a club, she's the lost twin sister of the woman he loved. (She died, we don't really know how.) Well, the Black Lectroids can't let Lord Whorfin escape Earth, they are fully prepared to precipitate a nuclear war if necessary. They do have the courtesy to shock (literally) Buckaroo so he can see the alien's true forms. With his elite band of six shooting scientists, The Hong Kong Cavaliers, Dr. Banzai is able to defeat Whorfin and save Earth. Do you get the idea? What more do you need? Okay, how about Christopher Lloyd running around and everyone calling him "John Bigbooty?" Or Jeff Goldblume as New Jersey, decked out like a cowboy - he even has black and white spotted luggage. Gateway 2000 luggage! Watch the film two or three times, the plot is there...

Things I Learned From This Movie:

Neurosurgeons shouldn't tug on things they don't recognize.

Rocket powered pickup trucks don't look right.

The 8th dimension looks a good deal like what you might see through an electron microscope.

New Brunswick, Maine is a tough town.

Aliens with bird like ships should stay well clear of Earth during duck season. Especially you, yeah you, darn Romulans.

Alien Lectroids have nads.

Hologram viewing glasses are made out of bubble wrap.

Girls: Never try to get intimate with some guy carrying a electric charge.

Bacteria can affect people via television.

Good aliens appear to hail from Jamaica.

Four star generals should not use the phrase, "I'm barely holding my fudge."

Alien thermal pods carry parachutes.

Stuff To Watch For:

7 mins - This is some serious high tech stuff!

10 mins - Buckaroo is driving through a mountain?

13 mins - John Lithgow is applying electric current to his tongue!

23 mins - If Peter Weller was bawling out a song to me I'd do the same thing.

Just a moment ago Vincent Schiavelli and Christopher Lloyd were sitting there, but now Buckaroo can recognize them as aliens from the 8th dimension! Lost? That's a normal reaction for people watching this the first time.

Buckaroo Banzai is just a great stupid movie. Probably the best ever made. It knows it. It goes with it. It has fun with it. John Lithgow and Christopher Lloyd are the two best reasons to watch. Be brave, show it to your family and friends, if your lucky they'll get it and love it too!

Cut down from about three hours and therefore so dense that it at first seems chaotic nonsense, this movie actually makes sense if you concentrate & its great. So it's like reading a Steve Aylett book, you have to pay attention & find treasures & sense - things are there for a reason. Fun & strange, & nobodys heard of it. Always unfashionable. Perfect.

Stick your hat in your pocket and grab your ass...this movie is a wild ride. I agree with several others above. This film takes a brain to really get it. It's a complicated comic book story with some of the coolest characters you're ever gonna see on film. The alien hardware is geniunely different...a rarety in Sci-Fi movies. The running gag of all the aliens being named John So-and-So and Such-and-Such is hilarious. My favorite line is when Peter Weller and the good guy alien are in the spaceship and Weller tells him..."Take over, it flys like a truck..." The alien responds by grabbing the controls and nodding..."What is a truck?" It sounds stupid, I know, but when you see it, you'll laugh. John Lithgo goes over the top into full berserk mode with this film. And It's perfectly bizarre and so suited to the whole feel of the movie. It's one of those that you have to actually watch and pay attention to. So many people today have grown up on the generic formula movies. Few actually pay attention to what's really going on in a truely well constructed story like this. Sip your beverage slowly and hold your bladder...watch and listen...and enjoy. I've never been able to decide if the trailer announcing a sequel was for real or just to add to the comic book texture of the film. Anyone who was heavy into series type comic books remembers the next issue teasers at the end of each story. If it was just part of the movie, it was perfect. If there really was going to be a sequel that never materialized...that's a bummer. This film rocks. I love the last remark by one of the good guy alien leaders sitting at his table somewhere in the other dimension...."Big deeeel.."

This is truly a sublime film! The trailer I saw for it on another video seemed so strange that I just had to take a look. People at work then stared at me when I told them about this really cool film I'd just seen ...

If some fool gave me a gazillion pounds then this is the sort of film I'd like to make. As for a sequel, the cost of getting the cast back together would be - well, a gazillion pounds, I suppose. No laughing at the back, there. Hey! NO laughing!Okay, laugha while you can, monkey boy!